Thanks to the wall to wall sunshine on Wednesday the thermometer rose to a maximum of 13.7C at 14.32 making it the warmest day since 22nd February and 3.0C above my long-term average. The UV level rose to a peak reading of 2.5, the highest since 8th October, still at the top end of “low’ in strength. The solar radiation produced a peak of 513W/m2, the highest since 25th October, as the sun gains strength.
It will have been the last of the nights that an air frost was recorded, the thermometer only dropped below zero (-0.1C) at 04.36 early Thursday. That was quite a contrast with only three hours of below zero temperatures against the previous nights when we had in excess of twelve hours of freezing temperatures.
After dawn the sun shone strongly on Thursday that had lifted the thermometer to 1.9C by 08.00 making it the warmest start to a day at that time since 27th February.
As the anticyclone loses its domination a depression in the eastern Atlantic will begin to influence our weather over the next few days with much less sunshine and probably a mainly cloudy day on Friday.
The weather after the weekend will likely be so different to the past few days. The forecast charts for the jet stream next week show a major change in strength, but especially direction, so the mild days of this week will be but a memory! The wind is forecast to come from the northeast, a cool direction, that is likely to depress the temperatures by day and the maxima will probably be below average for March.